Sunday, December 16, 2018

pH of Weak Acid After Dilution

What happens to the pH of a solution of weak acid, such as acetic acid, if you dilute it by adding water to it?
How much water would you have to add to 100 mL of 0.20 mol L-1 acetic acid in order to make a solution with a pH of 3.0 ?
What is the pH of 1 × 10-11 mol L-1 acetic acid?
AUS-e-TUTE can help you answer these questions with our new resources.
AUS-TUTE Members should log-in to access the new "pH of Weak Acid After Dilution" tutorial, game and test (with worked solutions).
A "free-to-view" tutorial is currently available for non-members at:
https://www.ausetute.com.au/phdilwa.html

Monday, December 10, 2018

pH after mixing acid and base

If you add enough strong base to a strong acid you can neutralise the solution and its pH will be 7.
But what if you don't add enough base to the acid.
Will the solution be neutral?
Will the pH of the solution be 7?
These are all very good questions which is why AUS-e-TUTE has just added a new tutorial, game, test and exam on this topic.
AUS-e-TUTE Members should log-in to use these resources.

If you are not an AUS-e-TUTE Member yet, you can view the tutorial for free at https://www.ausetute.com.au/phmixsab.html

Saturday, December 8, 2018

Effect of Dilution on pH of Strong Acid Solution

Need to know what the pH of your hydrochloric acid is after you dilute it?
Need to know how much water to add to your hydrochloric acid to make a solution with a particular pH?
AUS-e-TUTE has just added a new tutorial, game, test and exam to help you with this.
AUS-e-TUTE members should log-in to use the new resources.
If you're not an AUS-e-TUTE Member, there is a "free-to-view" tutorial currently available at https://www.ausetute.com.au/phdilsa.html

Friday, November 30, 2018

Water-Soluble Plastic

I buy boxes of dishwasher detergent containing plastic bags filled with the detergent. I place these bags straight into the dishwasher. When the dishes are clean and I remove them from the machine there is no trace of either detergent or the plastic bag that held it.
What happened to the plastic bag?
Can plastic dissolve in water?

Find out in the December 2018 edition of AUS-e-NEWS, AUS-e-TUTE's free, quarterly, newsletter for chemistry students and teachers. 

To subscribe to AUS-e-NEWS, go to https://www.ausetute.com.au/ausenews.html

Saturday, November 10, 2018

Gibbs Free Energy of Formation

You can use standard enthalpy change (ΔH°) and standard absolute entropy (S°) data to calculate the change in Gibbs free energy (ΔG°) for a chemical reaction or physical change using the equation:
 ΔG° = ΔH° - TΔS°
... OR ....
you can use tables of values for the standard Gibbs free energy of formation of compounds (ΔGƒ°).
For a chemical reaction or physical change:
reactants → products 
ΔG° = ΣΔGƒ°(products) - ΣΔGƒ°(reactants)
If you would like to understand where this comes from and how it can be applied solve problems in chemistry, visit our new tutorial Standard Gibbs Free Energy of Formation Calculations
AUS-e-TUTE Members should log-in to use the new tutorial, game, test and exam resources.

Saturday, October 13, 2018

Effect of Temperature on GIbbs Free Energy

Imagine a reaction in which you decompose liquid water to produce oxygen gas and hydrogen gas:

H2O(l) → H2(g) + ½O2(g)
The reaction is endothermic, ΔH > 0, and the change in entropy is also positive, ΔS > 0
At room temperature and pressure this reaction is not spontaneous ( ΔG > 0).
But could I heat, or cool, the reaction sufficiently to make the reaction spontaneous?
Can I turn a nonspontaneous reaction into a spontaneous reaction by changing the temperature?
Want to know?
Go to https://www.ausetute.com.au/gibbstemp.html

AUS-e-TUTE Members can access the tutorial, game, test and exam by logging-in to the Members Only area of the website.

Thursday, October 4, 2018

Gibbs Free Energy Calculations

For a chemical system, either a chemical reaction or a physical change, at a constant temperature and pressure we define a function called the Gibbs Free Energy (G) so that we can determine whether the system will be spontaneous or non-spontaneous:
  • spontaneous if ΔG < 0 (ΔG is negative)
  • non-spontaneous if ΔG > 0 (ΔG is positive)

In this new tutorial we will calculate the change in Gibbs free energy of a reaction at constant temperature and pressure (ΔG) using:
For a chemical system under standard conditions, we can calculate the change in standard Gibbs free energy using the equation shown below:
ΔG° = ΔH° - TΔS°


AUS-e-TUTE members can access the new Gibbs free energy calculations tutorial, game, test and exam when they log-in (Go to Physical Chemistry Heading, then "Thermodynamics").

If you are not an AUS-e-TUTE member, there is a "free-to-view" Gibbs free energy calculations tutorial currently available for evaluation purposes at https://www.ausetute.com.au/gibbscalc.html